The silent hum of the AeroGallacianSpace mainframe filled the dimly lit control room, its glow casting flickering shadows across Cynthia's tense features. The latest data feed scrolled across the screen, revealing a cryptic anomaly—something that shouldn't exist, yet undeniably did.
Lena hovered beside her, arms crossed. "Tell me I'm not seeing things," she murmured, eyes darting between the symbols and numbers flashing in a sequence too deliberate to be a system glitch.
Cynthia exhaled sharply. "You're not. This isn't an error—it's a message."
Prometheus, leaning against the doorframe, stepped forward. "A message from who?"
Cynthia's fingers danced over the keyboard, isolating the strange data pattern. "Not who," she corrected. "From what."
The encrypted signature embedded in the transmission was familiar, disturbingly so. It bore traces of the same coding structure that had infiltrated their propulsion system weeks ago, the same pattern Marcus had uncovered before his sudden disappearance. But there was something else—a ghostly echo of an even deeper manipulation.
Lena's breath hitched. "You think this is coming from inside the mainframe?"
Cynthia didn't answer immediately. Instead, she pulled up a side window, tracing the signal's origin. What she found made her stomach drop. "Not just inside." She turned to face them, eyes dark with realization. "This is coming from Dr. Adrian's private data vault."
A heavy silence fell over the room.
Marla, standing near the doorway, finally spoke. "I thought his files were locked after his disappearance."
"They were," Cynthia said. "Or at least, we thought they were."
Prometheus clenched his jaw. "So either Adrian wasn't as gone as we believed, or someone's using his research against us."
Cynthia stared at the screen, feeling the weight of an unseen presence creeping into their carefully guarded system. If Adrian had left behind more than just research—if he had predicted this exact moment—they were already playing into a plan years in the making.
And the worst part?
They still didn't know who was truly pulling the strings.